Hey everyone! We hope you had a warm and wonderful holiday. Since our last update (mid-fall semester) we've been hard at work tackling new features and crafting product improvements based on requests from our circle of trusted users like you.

As the new semester is kicking off, we thought it’d be a good idea to step back and address all the latest MajorClarity news: First, we'll cover some pesky bugs you may have encountered in the fall (and why you no longer need to worry about them!):

Mass/targeted messaging:

Some users were receiving the "whoops" error when sending out mass messages due to how url's were crafted from the messages. We've since fixed this, so message away!

ACP batching:

Innovation always seems to come with its challenges…doesn’t it? By executing ACPs in an automated and comprehensive way, we inadvertently magnified time required for downloads. This prevented the batch-ACP download option from being feasible (without having to wait 4 weeks for your download to complete!) We’ve since rebuilt this feature to combine all ACPs into one single document, with easy-to-read headers and footers to differentiate between each student's report -- and to make printing more seamless.

Now on to the fun stuff... what's new and improved!

Data exports:

If you felt like MajorClarity captured a wealth of data, but had no easy way to download such information, you would have been correct…until now! We have heard your requests for data, and launched a tool to allow for just that. Schools consistently reached out to us for a variety of insights, but each school’s requests and needs were unique. Some wanted data on parental signatures of ACPs, while others wanted personality assessment results. So we built a ‘data export’ feature that gives schools the power to generate much more in-depth reporting on their students’ usage and download that information in a simple, usable format.

School level filters:

Do you work across multiple schools within your district? Great news! District accounts now have a filter that allows one to easily toggle their view between different schools. We hope you’re as happy with that simple update as we are!

Elective course checklist:

For those who love a good checklist, we’ve now added an ‘Elective course checklist’ view to the pathways tool. This can be used in a variety of ways, including to see a quick visual snapshot of a student’s progress through the electives / CTE courses within a given pathway.

Learning styles assessment:

In addition to taking the Interest Inventory, we’ve now added a "Learning Styles Assessment" to enhance student self-reflection and educator understanding of the various learning styles present in the classroom. Try taking it yourself through our student demo site: platform.majorclarity.com/instant Just click the ‘Edit my Profile’ link in the top left corner to access the assessment.

Document upload to plans of study:

Just when you thought custom pathways couldn’t get more exciting… we’ve added the ability to upload documents to a certain plan of study. This can be helpful to schools that already have existing guides or resources relating to specific pathways, or to those who wish to supplement each pathway with more information. Pathway documents will be permanently (or until the school/district removes it) available to students without the ability to be lost or the need to be printed.

Pathways set-up:

For anyone who experienced confusion, headaches, and/or serious side effects over the generic base pathways that came with MajorClarity (okay, hopefully it wasn’t that extreme), we have decided to eliminate them. Before districts chose to customize pathways, MajorClarity automatically added generic ‘template’ pathways viewable to both students and admin. Since these weren’t aligned with school needs, and were too generic to really help counselors meet career planning requirements, we’ve decided to remove them entirely. Instead, only custom pathways will be visible to both students and administrators at a given district.

Student surveys [by grade level]:

We added surveys early this past semester, but quickly heard from users that it would be helpful to allow for surveys by grade level (instead of just school or district level) -- so our tech team came to the rescue and added that as well!

And finally, in case you missed here are some of the bigger things we added last semester:

Individual course addition to plans of study:

In order to cross all our ‘t’s’ and dot every ‘i’ with several state’s compliance, MajorClarity spent the first half of fall semester making changes to our academic and career plan process. Most importantly - we built in the ability for students to search and add specific courses to their plan of study. Students can now do this simply by adding a course through the search bar when filling out their selected pathway.

Student surveys:

Thanks to lots of testing and pushing this feature live last semester, district and school-level admin can now seamlessly create simple surveys using short answer, multiple choice, and/or ranking questions, and can easily aggregate/review student responses all in one easy place.